It is hard to maintain one's blahness when 20 kindgergartners rush you and hug you, exclaiming, "Miss Rebecca, I've missed you!" "Miss Rebecca, I love you!"Which is what happens to me about once a month when I read stories to a kindgergarten class in Seattle through Page Ahead.
No matter how glum I feel, no matter how bad my hair looks, no matter how dog-hair-covered and dilapidated my clothes (if I may take the liberty of using that word to describe clothes, and I will, because I'm a Writer with a capital "W") their unconditional love makes me feel better. Briefly.
Until I go back home, where no phone messages are waiting to tell me I have a job. Where no emails offering employment fill my inbox. Where, it's true, my dog greets me with great enthusiasm but mainly because he thinks he's going to get dinner even though it's only 2 p.m.
But enough whining. There are people a lot worse off than me. It's just hard not to feel down when there's nary a prospect of employment in sight and your meager savings are poised to dwindle rapidly while the debt incurred from LAST YEARS' stint of unemployment is about to go up, up, up.
Which makes it a perfect time to go to Europe, dontchya think? Especially if you bought a nonrefundable ticket back in December! So off I shall go at the end of April to Helsinki, where GalPal #1 has been having babies and braving eternal darkness.
In the spirit of adventure and saving money, I just signed up on CouchSurfing.com and have already found one potential couch to sleep on. Back in my Geeksoft days, when I could barely keep track of all the money rolling in, I would have never deigned to sleep on the couch of a stranger. I would have stayed in some fancy, sterile hotel, getting older and more fossilized by the minute. But now...well...I like to think that my (relative) poverty is making me more adventurous.
That's looking on the bright side, n'est-ce pas? Meanwhile if anyone has any recommendations for where to go or what to do in Finland in early spring, do tell! (Photo above courtesy of The Rating System).
Oh! And speaking of travel, my friend Dave Fox, travel writer and tour guide extraordinaire, is teaching an intensive class on travel journaling that looks like a lot of fun and is a great deal to boot. So those of you in Seattle, check it out.
